The Dawn Will Come
by Masquerading as Quality
Summary: When Aurora's family discovered that their only heir to the throne of Ferelden was a mage, they hid her away. But when the castle is torn asunder by a rift in the Veil, Aurora's only chance at survival is to escape into the mysterious outside world.
1. Shadows Fall

**A/N:** This is a weird AU/Crossover thing I'm trying! I tried it once and hated it so this is new, draft 2! If you read the original, some of it will likely be the same.

The challenge: to insert two non-DA characters into the DA:I storyline, and center the narrative around them while still covering major DA:I events. I'm obviously playing pretty fast and loose with canon, but one majorly AU point that has no explanation or justification is that in this story, the royal family of Fereldan has nothing to do with anything. Like, straight-up ignoring Alistair, Loghain, Cailan, etc. for the moment.

Malora is the destination, but other relationships are likely to be hinted at/developed along the way. Anyway, all that said, away we go!

* * *

"Ah, poor bird,  
Why art thou  
Lying in the shadows of  
This dark hour?"

Sometimes Aurora imagined she could hear sound outside the walls of her room. Commotion from the courtyard, clattering of dishes from the kitchen, footsteps in the hallway—this one was the worst, for she rushed to her door in the hopes that someone was coming to visit her, then rushed back to her bed to pretend that she hadn't been waiting like a kicked pup, then gave in and rushed back to the door and pressed her ear against it, desperately, only to find after minutes or perhaps hours that no one was coming.

Her cage was a gilded one. She had a large, sprawling bed upon which to languish, an elegant divan upon which to read the few books she was permitted, an intricate shrine to Andraste at which to kneel and pray that the Maker might come and take her horrible Curse away.

She had room to walk, too. To pace. She sometimes imagined that her footsteps had left little grooves in the stones, that someday she would wear the floor so thin with her pacing that she would fall through to the floor below. She never shared this supposition with anyone. They would beat her soundly for it.

Aurora had mostly learned to avoid being beaten. Of course a child of seven couldn't have known better, but a child of eight learned rather quickly. A child of ten, who saw visions in the Fade of a woman who could turn into a dragon, already knew very well not to say anything if she valued the relative peace of her simple existence.

She knew her auntie didn't want to do it. Didn't mean anything by it. Separated the two people in her head, the auntie who loved her and the auntie who beat her, and learned to be better. Learned to suppress, restrain, control.

Aurora's Aunt Flora was not a mage, not a Templar, not a member of any class or order. She was a regular nonmagical, nonfighting person, a former Chantry sister who was intensely loyal to Aurora's parents, the ruling king and queen of Fereldan—loyal enough to fulfill the treacherous request they had made of her.

The king and queen of Fereldan had tried many, many years for a child, and had very nearly given up hope of producing a suitable heir or heiress to the throne. With so much turmoil in Fereldan, in Thedas at large, they had hoped to prevent the explosive contentions that arose whenever an heir to the throne was unclear. Aurora had been like a gift to them, and for the first few years of her life, they had treasured her. Her life had been filled with nothing but love and joy and wonder.

Something crackled beneath the surface of Aurora's skin, as though in response to the memory. She clasped her hands together tightly, began to pace her room. Suppress, restrain, control.

She'd known, somehow, deep in her bones, that the things she could do were wrong. She saw the way her parents looked at her when something inexplicable happened, saw the flicker of fear in the eyes of other children when she felt that peculiar crackle at her fingertips. But for a time, they'd tried to control it, told her to pray to Andraste every morning, noon, and night, to ocus all her attention on suppressing whatever this evil force was, building inside of her.

Auntie Flora had arrived to give her lessons. They were dreadfully tedious for a lively girl of seven—all about sitting and focusing—and she wasn't allowed to sleep if her thoughts were scattered, or to scatter her thoughts while not fully conscious. Aunt Flora taught her a ritual she must practice nightly before she went to bed, or even took a midday nap. Everyone entered the Fade when they dreamed, but those with the Curse were prone to drawing the attention of demons if they dreamt without their wits about them.

The king and queen didn't shut Aurora away from the world all at once. The walls of her gilded cage closed in around her gradually, like the proverbial boiling frog. First her lessons with Auntie Flora had taken up more and more of her time, then she was moved out of her childhood bedroom and into this far less personal guest suite, and finally, gradually, she was denied direct requests to go outside, even as far as a balcony. Even as far as the hallway.

She wasn't even certain when exactly she had realized that she wouldn't be going outside again—perhaps she had never truly accepted it. There was another proverb—something about rats and pulling a lever that gave them treats erratically. If one never knew when she might be rewarded, she would never stop asking, never stop hoping.

"Ah, poor bird,  
Take your flight,  
Up above the sorrow of  
This dark night."

The song was meant to be sung in a round—she remembered doing it with her parents, her childhood friends—why, she'd even wheedled her auntie into singing it with her once. Now she had only voices in her head to keep her company. It wasn't easy to imagine oneself singing in a round, but Aurora had learned to manage it quite well in her infinite boredom.

She got two meals a day—one almost always came before she woke, unless she hadn't slept, and one came just before sunset. She remembered how devastated she'd been while she'd watched them carve the little slat into her door. Wouldn't want her infecting one of their elven servants with her filthy Curse. It was a vague, hazy memory now. She'd been forbidden contact with anyone but her auntie for nearly nine years now.

Some of the elves felt badly for her. A few would whisper a few words of greeting back and forth with her if she caught them in time. Many slipped in things they thought she might like. Some chocolates, some bits torn out of newspapers, some things from outside. An orange leaf when autumn came, a spring from a fir tree to indicate winter, a snowdrop in spring, and a red rose in summer.

She wasn't forbidden from having any of these things, but the servants were forbidden from associating with her in any way, and she didn't want to get them into trouble for understanding how bleak her life had become and trying to make it a little brighter.

She wished she could do something for them in return, her sole remaining friends.

After some indeterminate amount of time, Aurora grew weary of pacing the floor and collapsed onto her bed, face-down. There was a kind of frustration that ran so deep it made one half-mad. She dared not tell her auntie just how deep it ran, just how thoroughly she felt herself cracking, for what could her auntie really do to help her? She would beat her soundly, tell her to pray harder, more often, more ardently.

When Aurora turned twenty, she would be named rightful heiress to the Throne, in a great public event, probably a grand ball or something. Supposing she made it through that blessed event, her presence would be necessary at any number of affairs for any length of time. If she slipped—if she revealed her magic—she would meet a terrible end. At best, she'd be sent away to a prison far less pleasant than the one she currently called home; at worst, beheaded, or made Tranquil.

And what chance did she have, really? Sometimes she felt magic crackling on her fingertips with just a thought, an old memory that barely even mattered anymore! How was she supposed to suppress, restrain, control it for the rest of her life?

She'd no way of knowing how many days, or weeks, or months maybe, remained until her twentieth birthday. She kept track of the years by the seasons, rarely confirmed by the odd bit of newspaper, but the days blurred together, and in recent years, she'd begun to feel so horribly depressed that she could not keep track of much of anything. What was it she'd received last? An autumn leaf or a winter fir?

She was marching toward the date of her death or her undoing, one way or another. She rather wished she might have enjoyed more of her time on this wretched earth, rather than languishing in meaningless solitude for whatever remained of her days.

"Ah, poor bird,  
As you fly,  
Can you see the dawn of..."

Aurora's lacklustre singing was interrupted by a deep and dissatisfying yawn. Distantly, she imagined she could hear thunder rumbling outside the castle walls. Perhaps in another world, separate and unreachable, it was raining.

She had almost drifted off to sleep when the fabric of the universe seemed to tear apart before her eyes.

At first she saw only white, blinding, then only violent green. The wall of her room had exploded inward, and bits of rock and dust pelted against her with the force of whatever had caused the event. She couldn't open her eyes more than a sliver—hadn't seen so much as a beam of natural light in years—and so had no way of knowing that she ought to have stepped aside.

An enormous mass, warm and heavy, struck Aurora hard, and she fell backwards onto the ground with whatever it was on top of her. She shielded her eyes against the light, struggled to steady her breathing as the sight and the sound threatened to overwhelm her in its immediacy. There was fighting outside. Aurora hadn't known she'd be able to identify fighting if she heard it, but this was somehow unmistakeable. Clashing and yelling, and inhuman noises Aurora didn't want to think too much about.

It took something warm and wet and sticky dripping onto her neck to spur Aurora to action. She scrambled with all her might out from underneath whatever had fallen atop her, furiously wiped her neck with her hand, and pulled it away to examine it.

She nearly retched. It was blood. The thing that had fallen on her was a person.

Aurora barely stifled a scream against her fist, collapsed onto her knees in horror, could not bear to look, then could not bear to look away. He was barely still recognizable as a person. Still bleeding, but no longer breathing. This man wasn't in heavy armour, wasn't carrying a sword or a bow. Whatever was happening outside had killed him anyway.

She needed to do something, needed to move, or run, or just simply get back up onto her feet. But her entire body was trembling uncontrollably, and she still felt that she might vomit at any second. She squeezed her eyes closed and breathed deeply, thought, _suppress, restrain, control, do not go anywhere without your wits about you. Get your wits about you, Aurora!_

She needed to leave. There was no life for her here. Not now, at the very least. No telling how long it would be before someone came to check on her. Whatever was afoot in the courtyard below her, she needed to get away from it.

A part of her thought the prospect should have been liberating, even the tiniest bit exciting, despite the dismal sight before her—but Aurora felt only abject terror, and still she could not quite make it onto her feet. Perhaps her life here was a mere shell of the notion, but this was the only existence she knew.

Aurora shook her head, swallowed hard, suppress, restrain, control, and made it onto shaky legs. She needed clothes. Something to protect her from the elements. She kept her eyes half closed as she worked her way around the dead man on the floor of her room, towards her closet, but still tripped over something that rolled and clattered and sent a fresh jolt of terror through her.

She steeled her courage and dared a glance downward. It was a staff. She'd only seen them in pictures before. This one seemed much larger than she'd have imagined, and much more...intricately crafted. When she chanced to examine it just a bit further, however, she saw that the dead man's hand was still half clasped around it, and had to look away to avoid being sick.

This man, who had been killed in whatever conflict raged in the courtyard below, had not been just a normal person. He'd been a mage.

The mere thought of it was overwhelming. Aurora could scarcely wrap her head around it, even as she refocused her attention upon changing her clothes. Instead of being taught to control and suppress, he'd been taught to wield his magic as the powerful and dangerous weapon that struck fear into the hearts of Aurora's people. This man had not spent his life locked away in a room somewhere, reading and praying and staving off possession or a far more imminent madness for whatever time he had. He had gone out into the world to explore and learn and do and see and _fight_.

Once she'd fastened the most practical dress she owned, she set about the dreadful task of forcing herself to look at the dead man's corpse more closely. She'd had half a mind to take his leathery armour, but it was torn to pieces, and covered in blood. She couldn't have borne it even if it would have been useful. She thought to take the staff, but hesitated.

Did she truly dare? There wouldn't even be the slightest chance for her after this. She didn't even know how to use the force that dwelt in her veins, but the moment she touched a staff willfully, she would be as guilty as a practiced blood mage.

Another troubling thought: was she? Aurora had been locked away, secluded even from the elven servants, whom humans had never held in particularly high esteem, for the better part of her life now. Magic was dangerous, evil by its very nature, a Curse. Was she cruel and selfish to unleash her untrained Curse upon the world, simply because she saw no better path for herself? Because she didn't want to be in this room any longer? Was she bound to meet the same end as the dead man at her feet? Could her life culminate in anything but tragedy?

Hand still poised just a finger's width away from the staff, Aurora surveyed her room. Two of the four walls had been nearly destroyed, and the door to the hallway had fallen right off its hinges. Terrified though she was, Aurora could find in her the tiniest flicker of satisfaction at the sight of that. And this, in the end, was the feeling that impelled her to take hold of the staff.

Tremulously, breathlessly, Aurora began to sing to herself. It was a strange impulse, but she had no other way of coping with the flood of disparate emotions this simple act had brought out in her. She felt tears prickling in the corners of her eyes, both from fear and from a troubled sort of happiness. It was that tiny, twisted bit of anticipation she'd hoped to find in the promise of this moment, settling itself restlessly somewhere inside her heart.

"Ah, poor bird,  
As you fly,  
Can you see the dawn of  
Tomorrow's sky?"


	2. A light in this darkened time

"Shit! Fuck, shit, ass, bitch, shit! That last despair demon passed right through me. Feels like a sodding ice storm in my gut."

"Varric, would you be so gracious as to watch your language?" Seeker Pentaghast snapped.

'Well, fuck me, Seeker," Varric replied with mock-brightness, "sorry we're not all human battering rams!"

To say that it had been a trying day would be a marvelous understatement. A moot point, even, for every day was more trying than the last. Days didn't so much begin and end anymore as they dragged on one after the other in an endless fog of misery.

"...still don't see why the Herald sees fit to entertain these...mages in the first place."

The way the Seeker said mages made it sound like a dirty word, and it boiled the blood of the Herald in question. "Still within earshot," Elonaya snapped.

"Are you?" Cassandra countered coolly. "Sometimes I wonder if you hear anything I've said."

"We can all hear you, Seeker," Varric murmured. "But you might have chosen the wrong audience for your anti-mage rants."

"I do not rant!"

"Mhm."

They were nearing Redcliffe now, thanks be to Ghilan'nain, though what they would find there remained a mystery. Elonaya was not so foolish as to trust blindly in mages, as Seeker Pentaghast seemed determined to believe at the moment, but she'd rather march into a band of mages than templars, given the option.

In addition, the Grand Enchanter who had invited her was an elf, and that changed matters significantly. Elonaya would take the word of a flat-ear over a shem any day of the week. She'd rather keep that thought to herself if she could, but the Seeker was trying what little patience she possessed today.

"...really what you think? You think that I rant? Well, I will have you know, _dwarf_ , that—"

The rest of that thought was mercifully drowned out by a blood-curdling screech. The sky above their heads grew abruptly dark, then light again, and they looked up as a unit to set eyes upon an enormous dragon.

"Shit!"

"Ugh. My lady Herald, if I may, I would prefer not to fight it."

"Awfully casual response," Elonaya remarked as she backed away, mentally preparing their escape.

"Didn't you know, Red? The Seeker is a famous dragon-slayer."

"Varric!"

"Both of you!" Elonaya snapped.

But before they could take another step towards their escape, the fabric of the universe tore apart before their eyes.

Elonaya barely stifled a shriek as the mark on her hand sparked painfully. The sickly green light of the fade poured from the newly-formed rift in tendrils, like rising smoke, and the dragon, who clearly had better sense than the entirety of Cassandra's Inquisition, quickly fled the scene. Strangely, though, no demons came pouring out of the rift. Only the smoke, and the horrible, sinking feeling that something on Elonaya's skin was linked to something so inconceivable.

"Curious," said Solas, who hadn't spoken for the better part of the trip.

"Caught it before any demons came pouring out," said Varric. "What a treat."

"That is my concern," Solas replied. "I had thought that the tears in the Veil could only be caused by restless spirits pressing upon it from the other side."

"There," said Cassandra, pointing. "Look."

Something, beneath or slightly beyond the fade rift, was moving. Twitching. Scrambling. Trying to get away.

Solas had evidently come to this conclusion more quickly than the rest of them—he'd grabbed the creature by the air around it with little more than a flick of his wrist.

"Please!" cried a woman's voice. "Please don't hurt me!"

Elonaya approached, and her companions followed closely. First she held out her hand, imitated that twisting motion Solas had shown her, and pulled the pieces of the sky back together. The ache in her hand subsided somewhat, and her vision cleared. She could see now that the woman in question was young, human, and had dropped a mage's staff at her feet.

"Are you going to try to run away?" Elonaya asked her coolly.

"No, please, I swear it!" Wide, violet blue eyes, shining with genuine fear, tugged just the tiniest bit at Elonaya's heart. " Just please don't kill me!"

The strangest thing about this whole business, more so than the giant hole in the sky, the dark magic embedded in her palm, and the position into which these things hat placed her, was that Elonaya had begun to feel the dreadful urge to attempt to act with compassion. Not only that, but compassion for those who would likely never have extended her the same courtesy if their roles were reversed.

It didn't come easily to her. It left a sick, churning feeling deep in her stomach, to see a plaintive face turned in her direction and to feel anything other than disgust. But there were people depending on her. Lives depending on her. And she found that she could not bring herself to let them down.

What her lethal'len would think of her now.

"Let her go, Solas."

The young woman collapsed in a heap on the ground, and immediately took to pleading again. Pathetic. "Please." Voice broken like so much shattered glass. "I couldn't hurt you if I wanted to. I'm not a proper mage at all. I've never been trained."

"Really," Cassandra sneered, low and harsh. "Then explain your staff."

The woman held out her hands in surrender. "Please don't kill me! I stole it. Please don't kill me, please, I was just trying to get away! One of those...explosion...things," she waved vaguely at the place where the fade rift had been, "happened at Redcliffe, and I didn't know what to do, and there was a dead man in my room with a staff, and I thought I could...it was stupid." She bowed her head, clasped her hands as though in prayer.

"You came from Redcliffe?" Elonaya wondered.

"Yes," said the woman, suddenly tense.

"Another rebel mage, lying and causing trouble," Cassandra remarked coldly.

"Will you give it a rest, Seeker?" Varric countered.

Elonaya held up her hand in a vain attempt to silence them. "What's the situation there? With the rift?"

The woman's violet-blue eyes darted about as though the simple question were some grand interrogation. "The...rift? Tore the castle apart. I heard...fighting, everywhere." But...I..."

She looked like she might weep. Where Elonaya might once have felt utter disgust at such a sight, there was only a stiff sort of awkwardness. An ever-growing part of her desperately wanted to help, and she despised it.

"I ran away," the woman finished at last. "It was my only chance."

"Ran away," Elonaya echoed flatly.

"I...was locked away. Because of my magic. For a long time. Not—!" she held out her hands again, surrender. "Not because of anything I did! Just because I had it. I swear I never used it. Not even today. I prayed every day that the Maker would take away my curse, but my parents couldn't bear to send me to the Circle, and—"

"Wait," said Elonaya. "How long have you been locked away, exactly?"

"You actually believe her?"

"Please, please, I don't want to cause any trouble! It's been...I don't know, eleven years or more?"

"Nonsense."

"You heard what she said, Cassandra," Elonaya tried to keep her voice measured. "Her parents didn't want to lose her to _the Circle_."

"Why do you say it that way?" the woman wondered.

"The Circles fell," Elonaya told her. "The mages are in rebellion."

"Rebellion..."

And in that one word, Elonaya found the truth in her story. She might not know what it was to be locked away, but oh, did she ever know what it was to long for the possibility of more!

"Please, I promise I don't know anything about that," said the woman. "I'd been locked away in my room for what felt like forever, and I just...if there was any chance for a life, any life at all...I had to take it." She hung her head low. "I don't want to cause any trouble. I want to learn to control my magic. Really control it. So I'm not a danger. So I can live."

Elonaya inhaled deeply, took a moment to contemplate her surroundings. Her hand was starting to ache again. There was another rift nearby. Her feet were cold. She'd been offered boots, but they made her feet feel weird. She much preferred to stick to her foot wrappings, even if it was uncomfortable in this climate. Her entire body was sore beyond anything she'd ever experienced. She needed to rest soon, or there'd be nothing left of her.

Fen'Harel take this shem mage and her shem problems. "So you'll come with us."

"What?"

"We need mages, right?" She was developing a nasty headache. Right behind the eyes. "It's not so hard to teach a mage to hold a stick."

"We cannot just—!"

"We'll figure something out, Cassandra," Elonaya snapped.

Cassandra sighed heavily. "Very well," she said, then added, with no small helping of vitriol, "my lady Herald."

Elonaya rerouted them to their nearest camp to deposit their runaway mage with a scout. She rather hoped it would be Harding—wasn't sure she could trust the others as far as she could throw them. No one had any further words of protest regarding the change of route; she gathered they might need the rest more than they let on.

"So, you got a name, Princess?" Varric wondered.

"Aurora."

"Nice name. I'll stick with Princess. Suits you."

"And...you are?" Aurora prompted.

"Varric Tethras. Storyteller by trade, dashing crossbowman by necessity."

Laughter felt like a distant, exhausted sort of relief. "You know, you choose funny nicknames sometimes, Varric," Elonaya remarked.

"It's a gift," Varric replied pleasantly.

"Red, makes sense," Elonaya festured to her hair. "Seeker's more a title than a nickname..."

"Is it?" Varric countered.

"Ugh," the Seeker weighed in.

"Chuckles—that one perplexes me."

Varric gestured dramatically to Solas. "Because he's so damn funny, of course."

"Huh."

"I'm sorry," said Aurora to Elonaya. "I didn't catch your name."

"Elonaya of Clan Lavellan," she responded automatically, then felt a little hitch in her throat. "Well. Formerly."

Aurora didn't seem to notice. "You're a mage," she remarked. "Are there many among the...uh...Dalish?"

"Not many," Elonaya said, somewhat flatly. Rather wished she hadn't mentioned her clan in the first place. "All Keepers have the Gift, and they must have a line of succession."

"If I may ask," Solas spoke up once more, for perhaps the second time today. Odd that the sound of his voice should startle her, "where in that line of succession were you?"

Elonaya felt something treacherous bubbling in the pit of her stomach. Irritation, or perhaps it was regret—either way, it was most unwelcome, and she struggled to swallow it down. "Not that it matters much now, but I was First."

"You'd have made a curious choice for a Keeper," said Solas.

Like a flashfire, all the irritation and regret came flooding right to the surface. "Would you believe it, Solas, you've found something you and the Dalish can agree upon," she said coldly.

"Ir abelas. I meant no offense."

"As I said, it hardly matters now," Elonaya bit back.

"Aaanyway," Varric said, positioning himself suddenly conspicuously between them. "Do any reading during your years in captivity, Princess?"

"A little," said Aurora. "As much as I could."

"Ever read about the Champion of Kirkwall?"

"No...sorry. Most of the books I was given were about the evils of magic."

"Well! Have I got a tale for you!" said Varric, and now the brightness in his tone was real. "Even the Seeker loves this one."

"I wonder how much of it will have changed since its last performance," Cassandra replied sternly.


End file.
